Weapons & Equip move Crystal Assassin / Frost set bonus stats to the actual armor

[Baconfry]

I'm not a fan of how Crystal Assassin and Frost armor rely on stats from the set bonus to be viable. They already have unique effects that would be sufficient set bonuses on their own, so locking stats behind the set bonus only serves to discourage hybridization. This can sometimes be justified for balance reasons, but in the case of Crystal Assassin and Frost armor, moving the stats away from the set bonus and onto the armor itself would not be imbalanced at all. And that's because these armor pieces currently have HORRIBLE stats, making them useless without a full set (with the exception of the Frost Breastplate, which I'm not planning to touch).

This is how I would distribute them:

Crystal Assassin Hood: increase critical strike chance bonus by 10% (total 15%)
Crystal Assassin Shirt: increase damage bonus by 10% (total 15%)
Crystal Assassin armor set bonus: no longer grants 10% damage and critical strike chance

This would make the Hood a decent compromise for mages who want a bit of extra defense at the cost of damage bonuses. Your current options are either the Adamantite/Hallowed Headgear for DPS, or Titanium/Hallowed Mask for defense (and no magic bonuses). The buffed Hood would be somewhere in-between. It would only be worth it for mages since melee helmets have high defense already and ranged helmets are only like 3-4 points of defense behind.

The buffed Shirt would be the strongest DPS piece for its slot, but would be outclassed by the Monk's Shirt and Huntress's Jerkin later. The Shirt would continue to be optimal for mages for most of the game, being about the same as Spectre Robe with more summon damage, though that's mainly a symptom of existing magic options in the torso slot being quite weak. You'd probably want to replace it later on with the VK Breastplate, Spooky Breastplate, or even Beetle Shell.


Frost Helmet: increase melee and ranged damage bonus by 2% (total 18%)
Frost Leggings: increase melee and ranged damage bonus by 8% (total 8%)
Frost armor set bonus: no longer grants 10% melee and ranged damage

This would mainly be a buff to Frost Leggings, since the Frost Helmet is not used on hybrid sets anyways due to poor offensive and defensive bonuses, and 2% damage will not change that. Frost Leggings would become decently strong for pre-mech melee, later being outclassed by Squire's Greaves. It would also add a bit of melee/ranged damage to the current pre-mech max defense loadout (Frost armor with Titanium Mask) and melee speed meme builds.

Here are some example hybrid sets:

pre-mech DPS mage

(37% dmg, 12% crit, 26 defense / 1 minion, 15% summon)

Compared to Adamantite Breastplate, this set offers +7% damage and -2 defense. This is an upgrade, and a justified one since you need to kill Queen Slime for it.

pre-plantera tank mage

(0% dmg, 35% crit, 49 defense / 25% summon)

Using the Crystal Assassin Hood over Hallowed Headgear on this set would provide +7 defense and +3% crit in exchange for -12% magic damage and losing the Hallowed Headgear's massive mana boost. (You could run Forbidden Treads to somewhat offset that loss.) Statistically, it is a downgrade unless you're running a lot of defense.

pre-plantera tank melee (no OOA pieces)

(26% damage, 18% crit, 64 defense / 20% melee speed)

Though statistically not as strong as OOA hybrid sets, this set might actually become popular due to having good accessibility and well-rounded stats. Chlorophyte Greaves would give the same stats, just without the melee speed, and with crit instead of damage. (Crit is usually slightly better than damage.)

 

[J Bame]

Don't see why not. It's not a buff to the armors themselves and it just opens up more possibilities during gameplay.

 

[ppowersteef]

I personally have thought of a "maximum summon damage" hybrid build thanks to the DD2 Armors, just to utulise mounts to their best performance.

The DD2 armors in general were honestly great for hybrid builds.

So yeah, obviously I support more possibilities. Could probably say the same for the Chlorophyte Mask set bonus too.

 

[firecat666]

(...)

Do you think any other armour sets could use the same kind of adjustment you're suggesting or only those two? I honestly never thought of not wearing a full armour set in favour of a mismatched one because the set bonuses are always so good and I think the devs intended this to be the case but I don't see why they couldn't close the gap somewhat. Unless the devs REALLY want people to grind full armour sets.

 

[Baconfry]

Do you think any other armour sets could use the same kind of adjustment you're suggesting or only those two? I honestly never thought of not wearing a full armour set in favour of a mismatched one because the set bonuses are always so good and I think the devs intended this to be the case but I don't see why they couldn't close the gap somewhat. Unless the devs REALLY want people to grind full armour sets.

These two are realistically the most likely to be adjusted this way. There are a few other sets that I might want to change, but the changes I have in mind would have a larger balance impact:

-increase minion capacity of Hallowed Hood to 2, remove 1 minion capacity from set bonus

This would make the Hallowed Hood a very strong hybrid piece on its own, but it probably wouldn't be broken because 1) lol 1 defense and 2) the head slot has a much higher opportunity cost than the leg slot, which is what made pre-1.4 Forbidden Treads so broken.

-give 5% damage reduction to Chlorophyte Mask, Helmet, and Headgear, remove damage reduction from set bonus

Directly buffs the magic and ranged sets, so maybe it would be necessary to adjust the defense stats to compensate. For magic, this buff actually isn't a big deal because they're about to upgrade to the Spectre Mask (18 defense), which gives way better survivability. For ranged, this gives an actual tank option for the head slot, though the question of whether the increased tankiness is worth losing the DPS bonuses of Adamantite/Shroomite is up to the player.

-make Beetle Shell set bonus provide 15% damage reduction at all times, and increase by 10% per beetle

Makes defensive Beetle armor more reliable, as it is currently inferior to Turtle armor if you get hit more than once every 3 seconds.